News

News

Deals with the problems of paying debts to the snakeheads. Gives statistics about the size of the pirate DVD trade in the UK. Calculates 10,000 Chinese out there selling, in a business worth £500,000 per annum. Also gives details of the way gangs exploit illegal immigrants in ways other than the sex industry, which gets the headlines.

Recorded Crime continues to fall. BCS also shows risk of being a victim of crime lowest since figure first gathered in 1981. Major increase in drug offences, due to new power to issue caution for cannabis. You would never believe this if you were a newspaper reader. Let’s panic the elderly!

Too much detail to summarise. Applications slightly down year on year, slightly up quarter on quarter. Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan areas from which largest number of asylum applicants originate.Journalists might like to write a short essay on the difference between asylum-seekers, legal immigrants, trafficked human beings and illegal immigrants. Hah! That will be the day!

Moscow Times article on US-based website allegedly offering personal data on Russian citizens. Apparently there are pirated disc shops in Moscow selling details details from individual ministries. This “private detective” site does the lot!
Question: are there such shops in the UK, the US and other European countries? Where are our fearless investigative reporters? Too busy finding anti-Gordon Brown stories?

This means that all EU member states have agreed a 6 month maximum for detention of illegal immigrants and a readmission deal before sending them home. But in essence, it means that illegal immigrants will all now be returned to their country of origin. There is some opposition from the Socialist group of MEPs and this is the BBC spin on the decision, rather then the EUObserver report, which I will hope to post tomorrow.

Though important, this post comes with the caveat that it is a puff for a BBC documentary this evening. In other words its not “really” news. It seems to say that “failed” attempts should be included in the figures and then they would be a lot higher. Well..doh!

I remember attending a conference in Brussels some years ago in which the Dutch police made a presentation about a special unit to investigate disappearances of immigrant children arriving on their own. There still isn’t enough information exchange among European forces at lower levels.